#i have appx too many back issues so i will always have those

[althaeaofficinalis]

the one magazine I truly loved apparently shut down a whole month ago and only posted about it on fb (where I am not). and it was a link to a page on their website that's now completely gone!! rip taproot I will never even get to see your eulogy

[shysweetthing]

Onsen Katsudon

So in my fic "We Call Everything..." there's a point where Katsuki Hiroko teaches Victor how to make a proper katsudon. Do I know anything about how to make properly authentic katsudon? No, because I'm not a katsudon authenticity expert.

But I watched YoI, said, "Man, katsudon must be delicious," tried two online recipes and said, "Hmm, these are pretty good, but they are not exactly 'food of the gods' good. What am I doing wrong?"

I then spent months (I wish I were exaggerating) reading about katsudon,  experimenting on katsudon, ordering katsudon at Japanese restaurants, making all kinds of katsudon mistakes, and figuring out what I did and didn't like. I also thought about what tools Yuuri's mother would have had available to her in the making of katsudon.

Lo and behold, here we are--shysweetthing's katsudon headcanon recipe. I have no idea if this recipe is authentic, but I do think it's delicious.

Having spent months perfecting the recipe to my exacting personal tastes, I might as well share it. I used this recipe as my jumping off point.

I know this recipe is going to sound horribly elaborate, but that's because I'm picky, long winded, and I added in a lot of irrelevant asides. If you (a) have the right ingredients in your kitchen, and (b) have sufficient practice, you can make a full-fledged katsudon (excluding the rice, the dashi broth, and the onsen eggs, which I'll explain below) in about 20 minutes, which honestly isn't bad for THE FOOD THAT GODS EAT.

There are a bunch of pieces to this, so I'm going to break it down.

Dashi

I'm not going to tell you how to make dashi broth; I'm just going to make a plug for learning how to simmer things in dashi because (a) it's way better than frying them, and (b) it's super-delicious.

This is very complete description of how to make various kinds of dashi.

At this point, I make dashi broth in 12 cup batches. Half of it turns into miso soup, and the other half gets tossed in a container in the fridge and used for cooking. Annnd now I'm going through 24 cups of dashi a week. (I had made dashi exactly twice before I started making katsudon--cooking with it is addictive, delicious, and good for you.) If you have to make dashi just to make katsudon, you will be in the kitchen forever, I'm sorry, good-bye. On the other hand, if you make dashi in the morning twice a week while you're eating breakfast, katsudon is super-easy.

Onsen Eggs

Onsen eggs are eggs that are made by tossing an egg in an onsen for about 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Most of us do not have an onsen near enough to use this particular method on a regular basis, but we can make do.

If you happen to have an immersion circulator (and who doesn't??!) (just kidding) (this is for the Victors among you who have no issue buying/keeping ridiculous kitchen equipment) (and me, I have an immersion circulator, I am ridiculous), you are basically making an egg 63--that is, you're cooking an egg sous vide (sorta, in the shell is sous vide?) at 63º C for about an hour. (Here is an incredibly in-depth explanation of the process of sous-vide egg-cookery. ) If you're doing it this way, I recommend cooking the eggs at 63º C for 65 minutes--this gives you a smooth, velvety, texture to the eggs.

For those of you who don't have an immersion circulator or an onsen, you can follow the recipe here (just for the making of the eggs, skip the sauce stuff): http://www.justonecookbook.com/onsen-tamago/ 

EDIT: See this discussion for a lengthier talk about eggs and the recipe linked immediately above. 

Yes, this sounds like a PITA. I usually make a ton of onsen eggs all at once and then store them in the fridge. The ones I don't use for katsudon, I reheat for breakfast: just place it in a bowl of warm water while you gather the other breakfast items, and then crack it on top.

You will probably want to make your onsen eggs ahead of time, or budget extra time for constructing dinner.

As a note, the better your eggs are, the better your katsudon. If you can get reasonably good eggs, please do so. It's not going to completely suck if you have the cheap eggs, but the difference between meh eggs and perfect eggs is massive.

Tonkatsu

Ingredients: 2 pork cutlets appx 1/4 C arrowroot starch, potato starch, or wheat flour appx 3/4 C panko bread crumbs salt and pepper either 0.75 beaten eggs or 1.25 beaten eggs (bear with me on this), but for now, pretend it's 2 beaten eggs, okay?

(you might need to preheat your oven to 350º F).

1. Start preheating your oil. You can either deep fry your tonkatsu, or get a frying pan and put about 1/2" of oil in it. You won't want it too hot. 2. Take your pork cutlets. Make sure they're reasonably large. I kind of like mine thin and wide, so I pound them to about 1/4" thick. 3. Salt and pepper them. 4. Beat 2 eggs in a bowl. Now, get another smallish container. You're either going to pour off about .75 worth of egg or 1.25 worth of egg, depending on what you choose in step 6. You don't have to be super-exact on this. Just set that bad boy aside; you'll use it later. 5. Dredge your pork cutlets in your starch of choice. (I like arrowroot starch--it feels crispier? But don't go out of your way to buy it if you won't be using it. Regular flour is fine.) 6. Dip in egg, then dip in panko, then re-dip in egg, and re-dip in panko. 7. You don't have to dip in panko twice; I just like my tonkatsu with Extra Crispiness™, and since this version of katsudon doesn't soggify the tonkatsu, it's worth it. If you aren't going to double-dip on the panko, you will only want 0.75 eggs worth; otherwise, you'll want 1.25 egg for dredging in. 8. Drop your panko-crusted cutlet in the oil and fry on each side until golden brown. 9. Remove and set on either a wire rack or a paper towel to drain for about 3-5 minutes. 10. NOTE: you don't want your panko to burn (yucky) but you also definitely don't want raw pork in your tonkatsu. The first time or two you make this, you should probably slice your tonkatsu open in the middle after resting to see if it's done. If it isn't, drop it in the preheated oven for 3-10 minutes (3 if it's mostly done; 10 if it's still super pink). The exact cooking times depend on how thick your cutlet is, what altitude you're at, etc., so, sorry, you'll have to use your best judgment. Don’t overcook because a dry, chewy pork cutlet does not attract many top-level skaters. 11. Whee! You're done. Set your tonkatsu aside and move on to...

Katsudon

Ingredients 2 tonkatsu 2 onsen eggs (warmed as described above, if you made them a while back) 1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced the leftover beaten egg from the tonkatsu a generous handful of peas. Frozen is fine. ~1 C cooked rice (I prefer using high-quality short-grain rice, because it gets a lovely chewy texture that contrasts nicely with the crispiness of the pork and the softness of the simmered onion, but also because I can make 2 cups and use the extra for onigiri because I'm lazy like that). furikake

2/3 cup dashi broth 1.5 T honey (to taste) 2.5 T soy sauce 1 T mirin

If you want to top it with something, chopped green scallions or shiso are always a good choice, but you don't have to do anything.

1. combine the last 4 ingredients (dashi, honey, soy sauce, mirin) in a sauce pan. Simmer and stir until combined. JUST FOR THE RECORD if you are like me, you might be saying, "hmm, SOME dashi is good, so isn't MORE dashi better?" The answer is NO. DO NOT ADD MORE DASHI UNLESS YOU WANT WATERY KATSUDON. You don’t have to use honey--sugar is fine--but I just think honey has a fuller flavor. I use less sugar than the other recipes because I cook the onion longer. 2. Add the onion and stir. 3. Cook until the onion is slightly translucent. This is what slightly translucent looks like:

4. Add the peas. This is how many peas you should add:

5. Keep simmering. 6. While you're waiting for the onion/pea/dashi mix to cook fully, put the cooked rice in the bowls, and then sprinkle with furikake. (You can skip the furikake if you want to, but I like it, so.) Slice the tonkatsu. 7. You're looking for two things here. First, you want the onions to be translucent and cooked in the dashi to the point where they taste of dashi. Second, you want to stir until the dashi broth is slightly thickened. You will be able to tell that the broth has thickened sufficiently because when you move the onions around, it will take just a few seconds for the broth to spill back into the spot that was vacated. I tried to make a gif to show what it looks like, let's hope it works.

(maybe this fixed it?)

8. You'll notice that many other katsudon recipes tell you to put the katsudon on top of the onion/dashi broth mix and then pour the egg on top. NOT THIS ONE. THIS ONE DOESN'T DO THAT. It's so much harder to control the temperature of the pork when you're cooking it some random additional amount, for one, and for another, you just made a delicious crispy piece of tonkatsu, and you're gonna throw it in broth and steam it? UGH. YOU'RE DECRISPING YOUR TONKATSU. Also, unless you are a freaking GENIUS with a spatula you'll never get it out of the pan looking good, because that's just not how the rest of us mortals work. 9. Once you've achieved sufficient debrothening (don't know what else to call it), pour the reserved egg over the mixture, stir it around, and then pop a lid on top. Cook for a minute, then divide the onion/pea/dashi mixture between the bowls. At this point, there should be just enough dashi liquid remaining to get the rice mildly seasoned, but not so much that it'll be swimming in liquid. 10. Place your perfectly cooked, juicy, crisp, totally not soggified tonkatsu on top of the onion mix. 11. Now take your onsen egg. Carefully crack it and pull a good-sized piece off the shell. Upend the egg over the tonkatsu. The egg should just spill out of the shell on top of the tonkatsu. You may want to slice the yolk so that the golden runny yolk coats the tonkatsu. 13. (This does not decrisp the tonkatsu; egg isn't as liquid as broth, and you're not steaming it. It just entangles the egg with the pork.) 14. Serve immediately after winning Grand Prix Final gold medal. This is what the final product looks like: